Diablo 3 Auction House is Closing

This is not a joke. Blizzard are pulling the plug which is one of the best decisions we have seen from the development team for some time. I think you’ll agree that Reaper of Souls just got a real boost with this announcement.

The auction house will close on 18 March and could that be a rough indication of a release date for RoS early next year? Exciting times ahead.

When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades. But as we’ve mentioned on different occasions, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo’s core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot. With that in mind, we want to let everyone know that we’ve decided to remove the gold and real-money auction house system from Diablo III.

We feel that this move along with the Loot 2.0 system being developed concurrently with Reaper of Souls™ will result in a much more rewarding game experience for our players.

We’re working out the details of how the auction house system will be shut down, but we wanted to share the news as soon as we made the decision in order to give everyone as much advance notice as possible. Please note that the shutdown will occur on March 18, 2014. We will keep everyone informed as we work through this process.

Josh Mosqueira and I wanted to provide everyone with a little more information behind this decision, so please have a look at the video, and stay tuned to this site for further updates in the months ahead.

Q. Why is the auction house system being removed from Diablo III? The gold and real-money auction houses have provided a convenient and secure system for trading, but it’s also become increasingly clear that despite the benefits they provide, they ultimately undermine Diablo’s core gameplay. A big part of Diablo is the thrill of battling demons and finding epic loot. While buying epic loot in the auction houses might be more convenient, it doesn’t feel anywhere near as heroic as plowing through a pack of fearsome-looking monsters and having them drop that one awesome item that seems like it was made for your character.

Q. Will this change affect both the gold and real-money auction house? Yes. We will be shutting down both the gold and the real-money auction houses.

Q. When will the gold and real-money auction houses be removed from the game? The gold and real-money auction houses will be shut down on Tuesday, March 18, 2014.

Q. Are the gold and real-money auction houses shutting down at the same time? Yes. The gold and real-money auction houses will be shut down at the same time.

Q. Are the gold and real-money auction houses being removed for all gameplay regions? Yes. The gold and real-money auction houses are being removed for all gameplay regions.

Q. Why aren’t the auction houses being removed sooner? Since the gold and real-money auction houses receive a regular amount of daily activity, we wanted to inform everyone of this upcoming change as soon as we made the decision and give as much advance notice as soon as possible. Also, removing the auction houses from the game is no small endeavor, and there are many technical and gameplay-related questions we still need to answer before this change is implemented.

Q. Are there any plans to add the gold and real-money auction houses back into the game in the future? No. We have no plans at this time to add either the gold or real-money auction house back into the game after they are removed.

Q. How will the removal of the gold and real-money auction houses work from a technical perspective (for example: What will happen to posted auctions, items or currency in the Completed tab, Battle.net Balance, etc.)? We’re still working out all the details regarding how the auction houses will be shut down. We know these details are important, and we want to ensure that this transition goes as smoothly for everyone. We will be keeping everyone informed as we work through this process.

Q. How will I be able to trade with other players once the gold and real-money auction houses are shut down? Once the gold and real-money auction houses have been shut down, players will still be able to trade with one another using the in-game Trade Window.

Q. How will the removal of the gold and real-money auction house affects changes planned for itemization in Reaper of Souls, specifically “Loot 2.0”? One of the main goals behind Loot 2.0, which is being developed concurrently with Reaper of Souls, is to make playing the game the most rewarding path to getting items. That goal has not changed with this decision, and in fact was one of the big inspirations behind the removal of the auction houses. We’re still moving forward with all the changes previously revealed as part of Loot 2.0, but we’re also looking at additional improvements we can make that will help ensure that the loot hunt and trading experience in Diablo III is as satisfying as possible.

The devs were suffering from constrained design choices because of the existence of an extremely easy to use and access means of loot proliferation for the masses. Means loot drops were what they were because the existence of the AH had to be taken into account when figuring out how to balance things out, aside from items actually being fun or whatever. When you give the masses easy access to all the loot the hardcores/bots are farming, you need to make the good loot very very rare or everyone is in endgame gear in a couple days. This unfortunately devalues the experience of everyone since the chance of finding any of the good stuff is nonexistent. And that’s in a game where finding the good stuff is all there is to do.

Now it’s gone and we can pull the FREE THE DEVS signs. It’s actually up to them now. It really wasn’t before – that’s why they were half assing everything with BoA loot.

About an hour after it’s gone. Remember v1.08 patch when the AH was shut down due to the gold duping bug? And we got nothing but 3 days of complaints and fury that there was no reason/way to play without the AH working?

Of course that was in the v1.08 economy. If Loot 2.0 buffs drops halfway as much as the console now, then people will be distracted by the shiny, rather than being whiny. Initially, at least.

You may not be aware but you were never forced to use it. Instead of allowing for personal choice, choice is made for you. As if everyone has been finding all their epic loot up until now. Everyone on this board used the damn AH.

The problem with this analogy is that “wallmart” in the case of Diablo 3 started out as a small store with a decent selection of items, and has an ever-changing inventory due to the fact that the customers are also the vendors. “Wallmart” only gets a 15% cut of the sales, and doesn’t actually purchase goods from manufacturers. Oh, and due to the fact that the items in this world are constantly added and never, if rarely, removed from the economy.

This leads us to where we are now, over a year later: “Wallmart” now only sells high-end luxury items at a fraction of the expected price, and only “near perfect” or “perfect” items sell for “profit”. Any new vendors out there have zero chance of their items ever selling for anything worth their time. However, due to the market being overflown with goodies that never get deleted, they can now purchase an entire house’s worth of appliances and electronics for the pennies they found under the couch the other day, making having a job obsolete.

Moral of the story: Why play the game, if the game is about finding items and getting better gear, when you can simply buy better gear on the AH… and do what with it exactly? It’s not like you’re likely to actually FIND better gear, eh?

Um it did not. GL finding those items you say? Well, with loot 2.0 the verdict is nowhere near in. But given what we’ve seen, you and Blizz just made a lot of Russians and other Asians very happy. Programmers are readying their storefronts now. This is so fail. If you did not want the AH YOU DID NOT HAVE TO USE IT!!!! How much simpler could it be? At the very least they should have kept the GAH.

And why would it be more hackers then before? It is probably more now when there is money to earn on GAH and for not to speak about RMAH which is probably a big reason for many to use hacks to earn IRL money. And just to remind everyone, is that d2jsp is not used by majority and the normal/casual player have never ever even heard about it. Also, its up and running even now, its not like its starting just because of AH is removed. Maybe little lesser user activity but else nothing big.

Looks like lots of BoP, coupled w/ no AH at all. So legit, casual traders are screwed no matter what. At some point, they’ll have to just disable all trading of any kind; any time you can trade w/ your “friends” then it becomes a black market clusterflock. I wish I could buy stock in d2jsp.

They could use the match making system like they do now with its different options such as monster farming, questing, story mode where they could simply add a “trading mode” that could have increased player cap for trading and players are locked in a special town where it is not possible to kill monsters, the player cap should be raised to 10-15 for trade matching

The gameplay was fun enough for me… But after getting to 60 I no longer had a reason to continue playing. Loot hunting was non existent. I could simply buy what ever I wanted. The auction house made the game a bore really quickly. I never even bothered to invest a cent on the blacksmith. I am glad I only played 1 character (wizard) before quitting. I’m looking forward to playing the expansion with a new class. Meh… Ill more likely continue with the wizard… If loot hunting becomes as fun as back in the D2 days.

Indeed the AH screwed the loot hunting aspect. It’s too easy to use it when it’s only a few clicks away, where as sites such as d2jsp uhh I’m not giving out my information to 3rd party sites and never did in D2 days.

I’d agree with you a few days ago but now… this is stuff from last week only.

– NO AH – Elemental damage does things – Vast variety of new and interesting affixes – Skills overhaul, no more godmode specs allowed – Adventure mode, I take it that means you get to waypoint your way around the entire game if you’re inclined to – Ladders – Support for Guilds/Clans (well, considering they were scrapped for D2 I’m still waiting for confirmation on that one)

All I knew before this was that we were getting an enchanting system that was ready for initial release anyway, new act, new hero and a bunch of probably not that interesting uniques, judging from gamescom. Aka more of the same old broken crap. But that was last week.

I still hate the skill system and I still think PoE, for example, just destroys Diablo in complexity, interesting builds, interesting mechanics etc and still will after RoS.

But this Diablo expansion has taken MASSIVE steps towards becoming a good game. And there’s something to be said about Blizzard’s technical expertise handling the online only experience and the feel of the gameplay.

But they genuinely seem to be addressing them now. The future was looking better when they announced RoS. Many people hoped the AH would be closed but no one thought Blizzard would do it. It looked (even as recent as Gamescom) they were reluctantly keeping it open, even though they admitted it probably wasn’t their best moment.

They could use the match making system like they do now with its different options such as monster farming, questing, story mode where they could simply add a “trading mode” that could have increased player cap for trading and players are locked in a special town where it is not possible to kill monsters, the player cap should be raised to 10-15 for trade matching

While the Real Money Auction house needed to go, and should have never been created in the first place, the Gold Auction house on the other hand needs to remain, although does need to be tweaked.

All items bought from the Gold Auction House need to be Account Bound. All problems solved. Something easy to use and no BS item flipping. You better want the item you buy, because it’s yours… forever.

I quit D3 a long time ago, I only came back today to see how you guys were taking the news, I saw it elsewhere. Reading these resigned comments… oh my, it seems like you folks are already pretty broken and beaten, like a horse that’s lost its spirit. Also there’s not as many of you as there used to be… Ok, back to GTA V for me! Yay!

best decision they have made yet, good start to fixing the itemization/drop system/crafting balancing/etc. sure there will still be people who can’t play the game to play the game and have to go to goldfarming sites, but whatever, that’s their problem. those of us that want to play to find things, best news ever.

As much as I feel I should be happy about this, I also feel that I have to put down money on that 3 months after the change, people will be screaming for the AH back, calling this move ‘Blizzard’s worst move ever’ and forming mobs with the torches and the pitchforks.

On a different note, note the date of AH closing: March 18, 2014. What do you think the chances are of Loot 2.0 coming out before, on that day, or very soon after are? As much as most people hate the AH, I can’t imagine that most people would want to play D3 for another 2-3 months after the AH is down without Loot 2.0, given that most people already complain that drops are horrible and that you never find upgrades anywhere other than the AH. So, have we been given a date to expect Loot 2.0 on or around, or are we doomed to playing (or not playing) for a few months before the change?

It was very frustrating in D2 to need a particular item for a build or a set and have to hope you managed to find someone with it who wanted something you had, and worse the difficulty of figuring out the worth of anything you found in SoJs or runes. Because of that, I really welcomed the Auction House at first. But I failed to consider the impact that would have on the loot tables – namely, that they were balanced so that you couldn’t find nearly the same amount of quality stuff on your own because of the complete absence of trade barriers.

That’s a big reason I drifted away from the game, unconsciously. It just wasn’t fun to farm gold and buy better items. So getting rid of the Auction houses is clearly the essential first step. However, that still leaves the original problems from D2 – how do you facilitate safe trade and reasonable item valuation? I don’t have the answer, but relying simply on it being difficult to do these things to keep the economy in check is a bad system. Hopefully they have some answers at BlizzCon for how they’re going to improve drops and improve trading at the same time!

People are happy, because (for most of us) the real joy in playing any Diablo Game is the grind. Whereas Diablo 2 had humps that could only be overcome through extreme effort and searching for just the right item, (and sometimes just a little bit of leveling) Diablo 3 humps could be overcome by a quick visit to the AH, and usually, you could massively upgrade your gear for a fraction of your gold. This is step ONE to fixing the game. The only other way to really improve the gameplay is to bring back skill trees. Auto skills suck. There is ZERO reason to start again with the same character class. Not optimistic we’ll see skill trees again until Diablo 4 though.

Good point, but that’s more for hardcore gamers, methinks. I never got into ladders, because I play, at most, 5 hrs a week, and just can’t compete. Not to mention, restarting even for ladders, you’re still making the same character (more or less) again, with freedom to switch between skills. No planning necessary. I played D2 for 11 years, and still never perfected a character to the point that I could beat Hell level. I beat Inferno on D3 in a month. That’s a problem. (End unfocused rant)

This can be good news if they fix itemization along with it(Itemization is great on consoles but too good for a game where trading can be done) , hope that the game becomes much more rewarding on the very high difficulties with the new Events and hopefully they can’t be farmed easily by bots or impossible ,Randomized Levers to activate stages or some kind of extreme caution required while fighting certain bosses/monsters that could potentially filter the botters from real players.

I was also thinking how can the game still be rewarding with the AH in the picture and there is absolutely no way when you can simply browse the AH and find the PERFECT item in mere seconds , I am hoping blizzard will find a way to enable players to trade ingame easily not only with trade chat or forums. Also this move should help lower the crafting cost and allow self found players to craft their own gems without the crazy amounts of gold that can’t be farmed alone without playing thousands of hours.

Wow. I am shocked. And more than a little worried. We’ve seen “drop buffs” before, we know you still don’t find items by actually playing the game. As much as most are like OMGYAY they’ll change tune fast once they realize it’s the only place they could get stuff. I suppose it will be entertaining to see the crash and burn, but for all the wrong reasons. Oh well.

Yes, no matter what Blizzard does, there will always be some item that we will just have to trade for to acquire. And what specifically this item will be, while it may be the same for a lot of people, it will not be the same for everyone.

Anyway, I’m not going back to trade forums, trade-chat spam, and named trading games. This is so D2, year 2000, and is one of my pet peeves in PoE. I find these methods so annoying I don’t even attempt to trade.

I’m not leaving the game to load up a web-browser to try and find a thread where someone might be selling an item I want. I’m not opening up a chat window and channel hopping to try and peruse scrolling chat spam for something I need nor am I going to partake in spamming the channels myself with WTB messages in the hope that someone might respond. And don’t even get me started on the named games. While I think named games are awesome for conveying what you want to do in-game, trade games need to be their own list, separate from people that are actually trying to play. Seriously, anyone go look at PoE’s public game list at given time. I almost defy to find a game that isn’t “WTS X” or “WTB X”. Frustrating when you just want to play.

Still in the game client. And if Blizzard implemented the Gold AH properly in the first place, making all items purchased from it Account Bound, there wouldn’t be hundreds of nearly identical items.

How many people bought something godly, then purchased something better and re-listed and sold the older, obsolete item to recoup the gold in order to continue repeating the process? Everyone. This is all BS and should have never been allowed to happen. This created the current state of the Auction House you see today because not one item that dropped ever left the economy. What did Blizzard think would happen without an item sink. Well, obviously Blizzard didn’t think. And now, we are paying for it with an over reaction on Blizzard’s part.

As I said in a previous post, the real-money Auction House needs to go, but the gold Auction House needs to remain, albeit changed to make item purchases account bound. Going back to the days of D2 trading forums, trade-chat spam, and named trading games is not acceptable.

For RoS launch, create a clean-slate ladder economy where everyone starts at level 1 with absolutely nothing: no gold, no items, no leveled up artisans, and no paragon XP. Have a proper Gold Auction House with account bound purchases. With all of this, no real-money Auction House, and maybe even some bind-on-equip for high-end items where you have to make a choice on whether to use the item or list it (which either way the item will be removed from the economy), the Gold Auction House would work just fine.

This seems silly to me. As others have mentioned, it will just push players to d2jsp and other [ominous music goes here] third-party sites to acquire/sell items. Whereas right now it’s a convenient, in-game interface. It’s not 1999 any more; people are going to trade items over the Internet. Loot 2.0 won’t change that.

Sigh, so many people already making the “how will we trade without the AH” comments. They are overhauling so much shit in this game for the better that I wouldn’t be surprised to see a robust trading system implemented. Take something like dota2lounge.com and tailor it to Diablo 3 and implement it in game. Frankly, in D2LoD I actually liked the trading system (GASP). It was inherently challenging to trade, which forced you to actually play the game to get gear.

I think they’re seriously considering banning all forms of P2P trading. It’s really the only move they have to keep 3rd party trading out, and even that doesn’t prevent full account sales.

“We want people playing the game and killing monsters and crafting to get their loot.” Fine. Then dump any other avenue to get gear. Period. No chat spam, no WUG games, no d2jsp, nada. Get it out. Everyone is self-found. If that’s their intention, don’t half butt it. You go half way (like the D3 AH and no soul bound gear) you make NOBODY happy.

Best move from them since launch!! Hail to Josh and the team, congrats. No more pay2win. BTW who the F*** cares with d2jsp when we will get great loot, i will find great items so i just don’t care!! :DDD AH flippers & co. bye-bye!! :DDD Good old times will come again! :))) It’s UNBEFU**INGLIEVABLE!!! Thx Blizz a lot! :))) Who agrees? 😛

Yes…great news! It’s not a fix for all the problems this game has, but it removes a MAJOR factor limiting drop rates and quality of items. All the crazy item drops (both numbers and stats) on the console are proof of what you can get from this game without an AH…no doubt Blizz are indeed using the console version as a test bed for how to improve the PC version.

I always felt like the AH was a cheat code for the game…I only used it a few times for my softcore characters and it was too easy to be overpowered. I use it a little bit in Hardcore now (mainly to sell items..and mainly the Born’s item set) but I still prefer to find the items that I want to use.

Now it’s pretty clear why the devs never mentioned any sort of new Ironborn mode for ROS…this must have been something they were thinking about for a while (maybe even for over a year?) and didn’t want to reveal it until earlier. This announcement is pretty much a 6 month warning and definitely makes it very interesting to speculate about when the Loot 2.0/ROS is going to arrive. I can’t really imagine we’ll get any sort of massive buff to item stats/drops before the AH shutdown, but March is a long ways away (and would equate to a 10 month lag between patches if we don’t get any other updates).

This makes me think what a certain NPC from Baldur’s Gate would say about this….

Minsc: Auction houses may be fine for some, but now, Minsc in charge. Ironborn for everyone!

I didn’t mind the auction house but this news is also good as I never had tons of money anyway.

I think what’s most surprising about this decision is that it seems Blizzard put gameplay experience ahead of revenue from the AH! Kind of a punch for all those “Blizz is all about money” proponents. Of course there is the possibility that AH revenues were running low at this point anyway but who’ll know 🙂

Either way, seems to be a good move that promotes playing. Hopefully there’ll be nice trading options.

Awesome news!! I this this is very good news for the longevity of the game. It would quickly become very boring if we were getting “AWESOME LOOOOOOT!!!” every thirty seconds, if Loot 2.0 was going to compete with the AH… 🙂

So I guess bind on account is going away too. 🙂 And I imagine the large amount of BOA they were incorporating into the game had some part in this choice, as though at some point, it just makes sense to fix the source of the problem instead of putting all these band aid fixes in.

I never hated the AH, but damn I can’t help but feel like this is awesome news.

Worst what they could did. It’s like moving back to times w/o social media cause people no longer visit each other. Or closing all online shops, cause people no longer go to normal shops. “the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades” This. AH was not the problem – it was the mindset of players. It’s in no way improving the game, it’s improving the income of 3rd party sides. PLAYERS WHO WERE USING AH, WILL USE THIS SITES INSTEAD. Dark ages are back in D3. So where I’ll be selling this mats now? (and their price gonna drop now) I can’t believe this happened o.O. I tend to be more self-found for some time now. It only pleases AH-haters, does not improves the game. O.o

So everyone using the legit in-game Blizzard-sanctioned Diablo 3 auction house will now use 3rd party sites to buy/sell items? LOL, no.

The game was designed AROUND the auction house. It doesn’t really have anything to do with players’ mindset. If you didn’t use the auction house you were arguably at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the players.

Removal of the AH is the best thing that could possibly happen to this game.

Everyone who didn’t want to farm items but buy it, won’t change – that’s what I had on my mind, maybe I didn’t used correct words. “If you didn’t use the auction house you were arguably at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the players.” If you like farming items then it makes an opossite. You’re walking with a guy who was taking all blues from the ground (not the most efficient way to farm paragon lvls). I was never competing with anyone playing D3, so if I have to feel sad because I haven’t killed ubers on MP10, then sorry.

I don’t know how I think about this yet. I guess, since I play mostly on my own, that this is a good change although some kind of place to buy common stuff like crafting materials and gems will be missed I think.

Closing the real money AH some kind of limit on the gold AH so that the most powerful items couldn’t be bought there would perhaps be a better solution.

Some questions: 1. Will you be able to trade with real money via normal trade window? I guess it’s not totally unlikely since it could then be supervised by Blizzard and managed with paypal. 2. Will they allow more players than 4 to enter special trading games where no combat is possible? Or will ppl simply go to trade channels and spam like there is no tomorrow. 3. How will this effect the value of gold?

Checking the date on my calendar again and again.. nope, it’s definitely not April 1st…. Freaking September 17th…. WOW!

Since day one, I have said that the AH’s were the one worst core mechanic in the game, changing everything away from the fantastic SINGLE PLAYER experience I used to enjoy back in the late 90’s and all throughout the 2000’s.

Finally, that error has been rectified.

After listening to the last podcast and hearing friends talking about the console version, as well as hearing these news today, I am more sure than ever that D3X will be a brand new start for the game, and finally, in the right direction!

Deleting all my chars tonight, and starting fresh in the SFHCL! Urge you all to join us… after all, this IS how we ALL will be playing starting March 2014 😉

Am I the only one that actually like the auction house? How is it any different than going to a third party vendor to buy the items? Ah just made it easier, that’s all.

I won’t miss the auction house. But I don’t believe it is the problem to the game. Itemization is the core issue, it is just too simple. Bring some complexity. More sockets, gems, runes, rune words, enchants, etc.. diablo is a farming game, so give the playersa reason to farm

The AH itself was never a problem. The problem was that drops and costs were DESIGNED and balanced with “AH playing” in mind. It’s highly probable that they will going to change the drop system and the costs. This is really A BLESSING from Blizzard. Still couldn’t believe it right now.

Now come on guys, post your negative comments. It is time to reveal flippers and jobless douches… .)

Totally agree. With the AH gone I will give the game a second chance but it all depends on Loot 2.0 now. Since I gave up on the game I have been left so far behind. If I can come back and start the game from scratch and farm my own loot and feel like I am progressing with a sense of achievement then Blizzard wins and I will come back for good. I’m not celebrating until I can say for sure they got Loot 2.0 right.

Awesome news. I myself use the AH quite often, but only because it has become some sort of necessary evil, I really can’t stay away from it. Going cold turkey by removing it completely is exactly what I needed!

If Loot 2.0 is as good as advertised there’s no need to close the AH’s because people will just be less inclined to use them naturally. If Loot 2.0 is NOT as good as advertised it’s going to really suck not having the option to buy/sell items in the AH.

Now that they’ve decided to close the AH they had really better deliver on Loot 2.0 or it’s going to be a major debacle.

Not. The best stuff and craft mats will be account-bound. Also, paragon XP/level are account-bound, and the more you advance in paragon stats, the less important your items will be – even the very best ones. Believe me, Blizzard knows exactly what they are doing here. 😉

So… No Real Money AH = no incoming money to Blizzard poket. How will Blizzard start getting cash? Exclusive stuff like pets/mount (wow-like)? Or… having to pay a monthly fee to play? I really don´t think Blizzard will put its servers for free (and pay all its staff to keep them clean).

Seems kind of hamfisted to be honest. Why not leave ah in place, but you cannot use it for ladder? Plus 2.0 was supposed to bind more items and lessen the desire to use the ah?

I don’t like the ah, but I loathed trading in d2. If they manage to remove the need to trade completely, then I see this change to “no ah” as good.

But current itemization needs trading. Just look at soj. Or mempo. Or practically everything. Lot 2.0 better be extnsive and remove the need to trade. Or greatly lessen the impact of trades on power of your character.

Really really stupid… This decision is just pandering to the whiners and trolls. Unless they completely remove trading from the game by making absolutely everything account bound this is just a big inconvenience. Back to trade channels and D2JSP we go…

If loot 2.0 is so good that you don’t need to trade for items, there’s no real reason to remove the AH. But if, after loot 2.0, trading is still the only way to get the BiS items then people will still trade and it’ll just be as annoying as it was in D2.

Commodity trading will become a nightmare…

This might also cause gold to devalue completely and bring about the rise of some alternative currency like gems.

Now all of those trade tycoon losers can go practice their uselessness somewhere that they’re more likely to kill themselves at, like the stock market.

Meanwhile, ultra smart people are complaining about bots and spammers even though the AH has only amplified the efficiency of botters by an unprecedented amount, and has obviously done absolutely nothing to alleviate spammers. Keep on being idiots, you hyper observant imbeciles. I’ll be cheering on the scammers because you guys are too stupid for the several anti-scamming mechanisms they’ll have in the game.

Also forgot to mention that this is just a PR stunt, they’re going to revert it in the future. This way they get the best of both worlds: The image that they care about the integrity of the game, and the profits of the RMAH.

7 pages in and no one even wonder what it means for always online though? Because while we know it’s DRM, they sold it on the back of the AH. Might it be a move toward offline Diablo 3? The money generated by D3 RMAH might not outweigh the cost of those servers, especially with the fast declining players D3 saw. Will RoS start as an always-online game and then after a certain drop in player base they patch the game to be offline?

Going offline would also be a good thing for those crying that “we’ll have to go to 3rd party site to buy items”, if you want to get your item outside of playing the game you might aswell just use a cheat engine and have em drop for you and be done with it, and shut up for eternity.

I really can’t believe they pulled the plug on this. It is definitely stunning.

For me, I thought the idea of the AH and even the RMAH was a good one when it was announced. But when the game came out, it didn’t take long to realize how many problems it generates.

First: The devs were obviously concerned about the economy. So they made drop rates way too low. When they inevitably improved it a bit, mega inflation kicked in.

Second: flippers and bots. They destroyed the auction house with mega inflation.

Third: The many folks who did use the AH. This is my personal problem with it but it is shared by many. I play self found. To me the game was about getting drops while playing. It just isn’t fun to buy them from the AH. Of course, you’ll say “don’t like it, don’t use it”. And I agreed with that idea. Until…. I made a serious effort to play multiplayer when ubers came out. I found many people to play with, and had fun. Added them as friends. A week or two goes by and suddenly every single one of them went from MP4-5 to MP9-10. Can’t play with any of them anymore cuz I can’t survive at those levels and they can’t play at my level cuz it just feels silly for both parties.

Furthermore, using the AH is skipping progression. There is only a finite amount of progression in the game. If you skip the progression, what are you left playing for? Answer, nothing. this led to many players quitting the game.

Very well said, especially in regards to the progression of the game. The AH gives players far greater access to high-end gear than playing the game itself. Once you get yourself kitted out buying AH items, there’s little/nothing to be gained from playing the game unless you play many, many, many hours. I saw a comment on the Blizz blog stating that this hurts players who don’t have a lot of time to play the game, that you need access to the AH in order to compensate for lack of play time. The irony is that the AH itself hurts players who can’t play many hours due to the rather sparse drop rates, needing not only to get the lucky item drop itself and then also get a good roll on modifiers (on Legendaries/Sets).

I agree that this is a bit of stunning news but very much welcome news too! =^-^=

Exactly right. I’m sick of the AH flippers, exploiters, botters, gold farmers coming in here with their fallacy arguments and calling us trolls and “Ohhh everyone is going to start using 3rd party sites.” NO THEY WON’T I do not care to make my arguments anymore because blizzard has weighed out the pro’s and con’s and realized the truth so f*** these a$$holes who only care about their damn money.

So does this mean that Loot 2.0 will be released around March or should we expect it sooner? Also, where does this put the expansion at for release? Slightly after Loot 2.0 or does Blizzard sit and wait for things to cool off with no AH’s and release the expansions. Lots of interesting things happening!

The AH removal may just be a week before the Loot/Paragon 2.0 patch launch, and we are very likely looking at a beta start shortly after BlizzCon in November 2013, for both the Loot/Paragon 2.0 patch open beta, and the RoS closed beta.

Step back and follow my logic for a second… Wasn’t one of the points behind having the RMAH that it helps pay for the servers. D3 doesn’t have a subscription monetary model but every player is ‘always online.’ How will they pay for the servers now? D2 style in-game ads? (why dose everyone forget d2 has this?) Or will they cut the amount of people occupying these hundreds* of servers by adding offline play?

*made up number.

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Couldn’t they have just made all the new RoS end-game items BoA, rather then get rid of the AH?

Oh God. In-game trading. Given the choice between having to deal in-game trading or the AH ruining the game I think the AH is the lesser of 2 evils. By far. Oh God. The flashbacks of d2 trading. I have to go to my happy place now.

But it did affect everyone. Drop rates had to be gimped to compensate for everyone everywhere being able to use the AH. Also, the in-game economy was being affected. I didn’t use the AH. How could I ever afford to make the best gems. I would never be able to, that’s how. You had to play the AH to make enough money to upgrade gems. I didn’t plan on buying the expansion, but this changes everything. AH was the worse decision ever.

What they need to do is now make all items tradable, even after changed by mystic or socketed with a marquise, moreover, they need to add a gambler with ridiculous gold prices or the ability to gamble “more” gold and have a higher chance of a legendary item being gambled to remove the massive amounts of gold in the system. Then they need to drastically lower the gold found in the game.

All i want now is ladder and pvp and pwn all those noobs and d3 haters that talked bullshit all the time how the AH is bad(so sick of more than a year of hating), making a clan with my friends, all have 2000+ to 3000 hours play time, we are those rich filthy flipping all day gaming bastards you gonna meet in PVP and wish the RMAH back so your mummy can buy you your 250$ EF

I also think that, if the console loot is a hint at Loot 2.0, then this is truly a full blown console game. As in, a game you beat in a couple of weeks and then trade in for store credit. The loot numbers are ridiculous; hitting 200k DPS and 60k HP w/o any grinding. So, honestly, if you can get godly gear ASAP in Loot 2.0, then why keep playing after awhile? You can’t trade it (legitimately), PvP is almost non-existent, and I haven’t seen any hints that Loot Runs or Neph Trials aren’t more than glorified randomized Key Runs.

Basically, there has to be something to do w/ the crazy gear we’re supposedly getting w/ little work come Loot 2.0. Otherwise, it’s a console game you trade in, although you can’t trade in the PC version. At least classic PC games had all sorts of hooks (PvP, mods, player economies) that would give you a focus, a goal that was obtainable if you spent the time to get the loot. If loot is the only thing to do, then RoS and Loot 2.0 will still suck and leave people feeling frustrated after awhile.

This is what I am trying to say and I keep getting slammed. People cry because I use the AH so they don’t feel as special about grinding 20 hours a day when we end up with the same good stuff. Well, we are still going to have the same gear because we will all just find it. Will you still want to grind when you find 20 awesome calamitys in one run? You hated the AH. I found it fun and it kept me “in game” because I work and have a family.

2) Need to now make all items drop more often, the drop rates of console likely are close to perfect.

3) No items should ever be BoA now, not Marquise, not Legendaries, not Mystic changes, nothing.

4) Legendary items need to never roll “random properties” as that will ruin the entire economy because nothing will have a steady pricepoint to base your find on. The only randomness on legendary items should be the values, and whether it rolls Str, Dex, Int (and other affixes such as “regenerates 1 mana per second” only if Int, changes to “Regenerates X Spirit per second” or “Hatred per second” if dex, etc. Also if the item has a class specific skill boost, then it could swap to another class as well; but never contradict the Primary stat). If this doesn’t happen, then the game will fail within 6 months after the AH is removed due to nobody knowing a proper price on anything.

5) Ensure that rares can be best in slot in terms of PURE damage/defensive stats, that means making legendary items slightly weaker in pure stats, but they have unique stats, stats that rares cannot get on certain slots, and more stats (by way of procs/special things) than rares. This keeps rares competitive and sought after for absolutely amazing ones.

6) Add in a Gambler, you can wager anywhere from 100k –> 100m to gamble an item, the more you gamble, the higher the chance it will be a legendary item.

7) Add in the ability to buy stuff for your banner and allow your banner to be seen on your character if you want it to be (or at least shown when you die, etc.). Make the things cost a lot of gold.

8) Add in a mode that you can gamble gold on killing monsters, if you pass the targetted time then items drop more and better depending on the amount of gold you put up.

9) Reduce the amount of gold you can find unless specifically geared for it.

I only play HC so I think it will ruin the game for “me”, because now ppl will have no reason to play the game but for the ladder, and i quit D2 when Blizz made resetting the ladder make all your items pointless because they didn’t roll into the next season.

I actually find this disappointing news. I say that not because it is bad for the game. It is clearly a huge step forward for the game –as it is right now–. This however is the problem. This change indicates that Blizzard is either not confident or does not believe that Loot 2.0 will actually fix itemization sufficiently to support the AH.

I still believe an AH is not inherently a problem in this style of game. The problem is only introduced in the narrow options provided to the player in gearing and building a character. The completely lack of gear variety kills any potential for an AH-based economy without driving people down the extremely narrow path of core stats that we’ve seen so far. There need to be completely unique approaches in gearing that are equally viable to have a thriving economy as we had in D2. It seems we aren’t getting that or at least Blizzard doesn’t believe what they are planning will accomplish that with loot 2.0. That leaves my heart heavy that D3 will not live up to the rewarding loot approach of D2.

Yet again it seems the devs are working toward making D3 into D2 (not a bad thing.) I just wish they would come up with something better than basic in game trades or just go ahead and make everything BoA. Hopefully natural drops will be good enough, because hours skimming trade chat spam to complete a build just doesn’t sound very fun.

Good the fact that they built their entire loot drop formula on the assumption that you would use the AH ruined the drops compleatly for people like me who play 100% self found and never trades.

At least now i can enjoy the single player experience just like i did in diablo 2 after the expansion.

To all those that whine about d2 trading coming back and how the third party sites will be used again.

Well For one blizzard is not unaware of the feelings from the playerbase on trade chat spam and as they said they will keep us informed on the changes that will happen in the future. They still have plenty of time to add a robust player to player trading system without the need for an AH.

Furtthermore people are lazy and using third party sites is not easy enough nor safe enough for everyone to suddenly change to that channel for their gear.

Really hope that we will still be able to purchase crafting resources somehow for RM/Gold. i hate to farm for crafting materials and jeweller’s tomes! its going to be a massive schlep to go and pick up every little piece of crap, convert, or convert up for jewelcrafting

Everybody complaining about this seem to have the “bottners coming back” card. Well, sure there will be more and obiously more third-party sellers but today Bliz has a lot more tools to help clean spam and whatnot so if the game gets good. yes, good cus it’s soooo bad right now than I’m fine with all the bottners in the world.

Meh, remember it is much easier to remove the AHs (but probably still courageous) than to change the game from upgrade finding into item finding…

I mean, the AHs would work, if we had much more stuff to trade, and much clearer item groups, not just being completely focused on items with randomized affixes that blurr most of the decision making and/or excitement.

With the auction house gone will npc shops be improved drastically, from gambling with chance of set and uniques, to very improved items that can be useful like in D2?

What about other npc shop enhancements ideas such as allowing magical items to have more properties or paying a small amount of gold to stock more of a specific item as the npc’s are sometimes grave diggers, you never know what you might find, but by paying a little gold they might go that extra mile for you and find a range of similar useful amulets for example?

I wouldn’t like to see more properties on blue items. But blue items having an affix or a set of affixes, where they can get better values than any rare or Legendary, would certainly up the value of trade npcs. If it’s a set of affixes, distributing the maximum values possible on bought blue items across the npcs of all acts might additionally contribute to the rpg feeling of the world.

Brave move by Blizzard. I don´t know if this will be enough for me to make me come back because there is still so much I don´t like in D3 (lack of randomization, no control over character development). But I will give it definitely a try.

Well, this was unexpected. Really. But it is nice to hear. One of the major flaws of D3 is gone, hopfully they will work now on the fix for the itemization and character customization (something better than Loot 2.0 = bigger numbers and Paragon Points). Maybe we will have a true D3 “soon”.

Sorry as a gamer the AH itself never bothered me. I was just fine with it and its use. Much better than trying to find a trade in chat…especially with how the current game is, it’ll be impossible to find anyone to trade with.

But on the other side..what about fixing the OTHER crap the AH existing brought up? The nerfed drops (so people were required to use it) the always online. A lot of game choices were built with the AH in mind, or based on choices that were already made due to the AH. A lot of the choices were to make sure everyone not just could..but would, use the AH. So then comes the questions. Are they changing all of the stuff that was decided because of the AH? Or just ripping out the AH while keeping all of the choices that make the AH, currently, required?

Not really going to help at all. And at this point it looks like they are just taking their ball and going home. The AH could still exist…it ain’t gonna hurt the game anymore than people who buy/sell items using methods outside of the game. The main problem is they just need to actually fix the other parts of the game.

Heck this dosn’t even touch upon skills, skill progression, skill variety…and a ton of other things. The AH is not a magic fix.

I agree, I am a new player, while I was leveling I could sell my items (on the AH) but as I got to level 60 there was no more point in selling anything. At the same time, during all of normal, nightmare and hell, I found only one legendary, zero set items, and that legendary was a wizard hat with strength. The amount of useless items you get is abysmal. Some of that uselessness comes from the AH having better items. It’s just natural to want the best although you can decide not to use it. I chose to use it but as a result my loot experience hasn’t exactly been on par with D2, nor could it have been, given the poor drop rates. In D2 I would run bosses at every junction to get some (low level) uniques, but that’s not possible either.

When I got to 60 I spent some 2 euro on some gold to experiment with gear. This game seems to be all about running higher mp levels (sometimes even at the cost of dying often). Different gear choices has a massive impact on DPS but survivability against elites often goes missing. Right now I’ve decided I’m done buying stuff and I’m just gonna play mp3 and try to survive. I really play with a hardcore mindset. My second monk will be a hardcore monk that I obviously won’t be able to gear with RMAH. Which is good.

I can only applaud this choice. I worry though – other forms of trading need some form of facilitation. You can’t just have one channel with 100 people all spamming end-game gear trades and you having to witness this whenever you are logged into the game.

Ppl on the Blizzard D3 blog are on to the money. The way the current game is, there is absolutely zero facilitation for good trading to happen. You cannot create named games. There are no predefined chat channels. The game needs a major overhaul if this is going to be successful. Items are way too randomized. Why can a wizard hat drop with strength on it? Why can I craft fist weapons with int on it? Why do mighty belts have dex? There is so much junk.. mountains of junk. I know I won’t be spending time trading unless I really want something special, and I will use a third party website for that. Just like I did when playing D2 single-player.

@ elvy They did not have to balance the game around people being able to get good loot through the AH, they simply chose to do so. What would have happened if they didn’t? People might have been able to find their own upgrades in a matter of tens of hours instead of hundreds? Isn’t that exactly what they have done with the console version and are planning with the Loot 2.0 changes?

@ sunflowersmooth Why is having a car required for a job? Owning a car is certainly a nice benefit to have but I have known a number of people who don’t own cars from successful business professionals all the way down to grocery store clerks. I suppose if you decide to play D3 as a competition then maybe the AH isn’t optional if your opponents use it but I don’t think most people view the game as a competition to begin with.

Well sorry Blizard, this is not enough to make me come back. I won’t buy the expansion either. I’ve put my money on another game for now and I’m very happy with it;)

1 – I left the game not because of AH – if onedoesnt want to use it, one doesn’t use it, it is fair simple- ; I quit the game -HardCore- because internet deco is at 100% chance the death of my char and, as I have said already on the forum, this is not fun. As I am fairly sure a deco will always happen from time to time, well I won’t play, I can’t afford to lose hundreds of hours of play for that reason. DIII won’t see me back until this has been fixed.

2 – By the way, if the AH is closed, how people are going to trade….because trade has always been part of the game. I can’t imagine DIII without a trade system, of any kind. Is Blizzard going from Charybde to Scylla ?

PS : I think the pole could have been formulated differently, I guess Blizzard did that move to make people copme back to the game, and -ofc- buy the expansion…. Well I’d asked people ” Is the removal of the AH a suffisant modification of the game to make you play again and buy the expansion ?”

In before Diablo3Lounge. Do people really feel that much better because it will be harder for them to trade and will be easier for them to resist the allure of using trading to get gear? It is irrational really. If they don’t introduce any trading system to replace AH then they are just killing the game, I doubt people will be interested in archaic stoneage trading full of scammers and spammers. Ofc d2 diehards are fine with this, because HERP DERP it was in D2 which was flawless, dont need to use brain, just rose-colored glasses! Screw rationality, objectivity or foresight.

For me, the RMAH was a major incentive to putting in the 800 or so hours. I made about £500 net, through selling found items, not flipping. It’s part of the fun.

I’m disappointed that Blizz failed to keep a check on inflation. Ok, they’re game devs not economists. But I’m not convinced there wasn’t a workable gold sink to be found. Maybe a progressive taxation would have worked.

I’ll still play D3, and plan on buying the expansion, but some of the fun has been removed imho.

I think the closing of the Auction House is a good decision from the creators, it has a good influence to the game economy with the coming of the Loot 2.0 and within it, the Smart Drop. I’m interested what trade feature will be announced, maybe a free city zone where more than 100-1000 player can trade with each other?

Glad it’s going. And no, I won’t be going to ANY 3rd party site to trade. Never did in D2. See….the thing is…..I don’t want your gear. I want MY gear. That I found. By myself. And don’t whine about \You could always ignore it\. Anyone who tried ignoring it while playing solo is still in Act 3 Hell.

The AHs, and the need for Blizzard to design around them, have done a lot of damage to the game, and I’m glad they’re finally being removed (partly, too, because that finally clears the way for them to give us an offline mode), but I have a concern.

My one concern is that it was the game’s core design that was the root of the problems, and not the AHs per se. Removing the AHs is a positive step, and should bring back a lot of players who’d left, but it won’t magically cause the game’s missing depth to materialize. A lot depends on whether Blizzard’s changes to the game’s systems can add the depth that’s currently missing; if not, then the improvement will be temporary and D3’s overall lifespan will be brief, at least compared to its Diablo ancestors.

Don’t get me wrong; I like everything that I’m seeing so far about the proposed system changes, and I think they will all improve the game. I’m just not convinced yet that they go far enough to fix all that ails D3.